Globalisation of Chinese Gender in the 21st Century

The spectacular growth of gender studies in the last few decades is due in large part to the increasing numbers of women at universities. Understandably, gender studies tended to have targeted women as the focus of research and gender studies has often been presented as women studies. This is especially true in the studies of gender in China and it has only changed in the very recent past, when Chinese men are also being put under the spotlight. Given the short space of time that Chinese gender in its various forms has been seriously researched in academia, the diverse and insightful results achieved have been awesome.

At the same time, the People’s Republic of China has “opened up” to the West, and Chinese people from Taiwan to Singapore have also been traversing all parts of the world as never before. As a consequence, ideas about what Chinese men and women should be and do are changing rapidly, providing fertile grounds for study. This roundtable meeting will discuss the ways that Chinese gender has travelled as it moved to and fro China after the 1980s. Singapore is an ideal place to examine this topic because there are some differences between China and Singapore in terms of perceptions about gender, yet these differences should be quite distinct when compared to Western notions of masculinity and femininity. Relevant topics include men and women’s sexual identities, professional experiences, romantic and marital relationships, and child rearing (schooling especially) expectations.